Hello again! Well I've now made it to Malaysia and, despite all the worries about it being the rainy season here, the weather hasn't been too bad! It seems to absolutely pour down for 15mins or so, then be fine the rest of the time. Although, I am of into the rainforest this morning, so it could get considerably wetter...

After my last entry I spent a few more days at that homestay, and managed to cause quite a stir in the village! I decided that I'd go for a walk one morning and, after checking with the owners who suggested a route, headed off into the village. The first problem was that Thais don't like to walk anywhere they can ride a moped to, and certainly don't understand the concept of going for a walk with no fixed destination or purpose. The second was that there are very few 'foreigners' that visit this part of the province, and it's certainly very rare to see white females walking around! The result of this was that every 10 minutes or so, a well meaning Thai would pull up on a moped and ask where I was going and did I want a lift? Once I left the main road and headed down the canal, they started to get very concerned - "dangerous, dangerous!" When I tried to establish what was dangerous (were there snakes in the banana plantations? Tigers prowling through the sugarcane?), they replied "you alone, dangerous!" Eventually, one woman dragged her husband out of bed (thankfully he was english) to explain that I really shouldn't be out on my own. What he actually said was that it was perfectly safe, but the locals weren't used to women with any form of independance....

My last day in Thailand was very surreal indeed! After heading back to Bangkok, I met up with a friend who I'd met in Chiang Mai (she's living in Thailand for several months as a teacher). She'd done some modelling before, and had a photoshoot in Bangkok - so I spent all day following them around Bangkok! It was great fun - the photographers were all Thai, and so we got to go places we'd never have been able to otherwise. We started off on a boat doing a tour of one of the canals, then went through a very poor area of town to a ruin on the opposite side of the river, and ended up at a local high school... Anyway, not something you do every day!

So, this morning I'm off to Taman Negara national park for 3 days, and then hope to go up to an elephant orphanage in the next province. I haven't really made any plans further ahead than that, I'll just see what the weather does!

Hope your 2008s all got off to a good start.... xxx